Wednesday, August 07, 2013

Congress To Public, Let’em Eat ObamaCare

One of the founders of the American Republic, James Madison,
wrote in Federalist No. 57 that the U.S. Congress would not likely frame laws
that would be injurious to the general public because the members of Congress
also would be affected by the same laws. The Congress, he wrote, “can make no
law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as
well as on the great mass of the society.”

But the U.S. Congress, the Marie Antoinette of legislatures,
has long since learned how to escape laws that members of Congress inflict upon
others.

Marie Antoinette, not a Queen beloved by her subjects, was
saddled with the quote “Let’em eat cake” by anti-monarchical revolutionists.
She was supposed to have uttered this phrase after she had been told the French
people were starving; in fact the phrase was launched into the hotbed of
revolutionary France by Jean Jacques Rousseau in his autobiography published in
1782 but written in 1765 when the future Queen of France was nine years old.
The phase was applied posthumously to the Queen, who actually was very
charitable to the poor during her short reign.

No matter. The phrase today indicates the lofty unconcern of
rulers with their subjects’ abject government induced conditions.

More than two years ago, commentator Stephen Carter, a Yale
professor and author of several books, noted with a shrug of disapproval that
Congress had just exempted its members from a pending law that applied to everyone else:
“The recent publicity surrounding the very old news that members of Congress
aren’t prohibited from trading stock using nonpublic information has the House
and Senate running for cover. Hastily drafted bills are picking up co-sponsors
on both sides of the aisle.

“Yet it is something of a wonder that there is so much
public excitement at the discovery that regulations that apply to lots of other
people turn out to be largely irrelevant to those who serve in Congress. This
isn’t an exception to congressional practice. It is, far too often, business as
usual.”

Mr. Carter provided some examples. Many businessmen, he
noted, regard the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as “the
bane of their existence” because OSHA sometimes promulgates regulations that
are just dumb. “Sometimes the rules are important. Sometimes they are silly.
Either way, it’s no concern of our national legislature, which, in its wisdom,
has exempted itself” from OSHA regulations.

Although the entire federal government is exempt from OSHA
regulations, Congress, perhaps anticipating an adverse response from the
toiling masses, the equivalent of Marie Antoinette’s starving masses,
never-the-less required federal agencies to promulgate operational rules
consistent with OSHA standards. These minimal requirements, however, do not
apply to Congress – “which turns out not to be an agency.”

A sigh bursting from him, Mr. Carter notes: “Then there is
financial regulation. Critics have lamented that no equivalent of the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act applies to Congress. The chief executives of public
companies must certify their accounts, and face fines of up to $5 million and
as many as 20 years in prison if they do so falsely. Members of Congress (like
all federal officials) can make up numbers out of whole cloth without any
sanction at all. Incorrect corporate numbers can mislead markets. Incorrect
federal budget numbers can mislead the nation. (Perhaps the federal budget,
like corporate balance sheets, should be vetted by independent third-party
auditors.)”

While federal minimum wage laws apply to private employers
and federal agencies, Congress is exempt from the laws because it is not an
agency. For the same reason, Congress is exempt from the Freedom of Information
Act. The National Labor Relations Act exempts the federal government generally,
but special rules concerning collective bargaining and unfair labor practices
apply to federal employees – but not to Congress.

No one should be surprised that the Congress is at it again,
this time in connection with ObamaCare. Members of Congress and their staffs
are required to participate in The Affordable Care Act (ACA). The requirement
was supposed to acquaint congressmen with the rigors of ObamaCare they had
imposed on the rest of the country. But some congressmen have slipped the
noose.

Here in Connecticut, according to published reports,
two members of Connecticut’s all Democratic Congressional delegation, U.S. Representative
Elizabeth Esty and U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, have decided not to follow in
the footsteps of President Harry Truman, who enrolled as the first Medicare
beneficiary in 1965 when the program came on line.

"I support the act,” Mr. Blumenthal said, “and believe
that federal employees and members of Congress should have access to the new
options for health insurance provided by the ACA, including what is available
on their local exchanges," Blumenthal said in a statement to a newspaper.

Since Mr. Blumenthal supports ObamaCare, he also supports
its mandatory requirements. Under the old dispensation, before ObamaCare
arrived on the scene to the blare of heavenly trumpets, Mr. Blumenthal’s
younger constituents were not forced under penalty of fines to purchase medical
insurance. Mr. Blumenthal, who may freely choose whether he does or does not
wish to enlist in ObamaCare, will be spared the fines that hang like a
Damoclean sword over the heads of
younger people who are not congressmen and do not have the luxury of
writing laws that do not operate on them.

One wonders how James Madison, quoted above, would have
voted on the exemptions enjoyed by congressmen who in effect have said to their
constituents “Let’em eat cake.”

Glad to have the names in your comment, but notice I did zero in on two members of the CT Congressional delegation here:

Here in Connecticut, according to published reports, two members of Connecticut’s all Democratic Congressional delegation, U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty and U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, have decided not to follow in the footsteps of President Harry Truman, who enrolled as the first Medicare beneficiary in 1965 when the program came on line.